Gratitude

What’s your picture of gratitude?

Meaning, what image comes to your mind when you think of that word?

Here’s mine.

“Why?”, you might ask.

I took a trip to Vietnam in 2007 as part of a medical mission team. I’d never been out of the USA before, not counting a quick trip to Mexico–just south of the border away back in 1972 with some college friends.

The Vietnam trip changed me. For approximately two weeks, I worked in the makeshift clinics we set up. I can’t remember how many volunteers we had, but it was a lot!

Before I took this trip, I’d seen pictures of poverty. It’s way different, though, when you hold poverty by the hand and draw blood from it. Or look into poverty’s eyes as it hands you its suffering child. Before I took this trip, poverty didn’t have a flesh-and-blood face. Now it did.

I say the picture above is my picture of gratitude because of the smiling face and the two fingers forming the peace symbol. The child is standing outside of the building we were set up in that day. I took that picture, standing inside the building. The grimy wall you’re looking at is the inside of his schoolhouse.

And yet, he smiles.

***

Here’s another picture of gratitude:

When I arrived back at the palace I live in, I knew I’d always be grateful God allowed me that trip. I still carry that little boy’s smile in my pocket, slipping my hand in from time to time to make sure it’s still there.

Deb